Fig 1.
Map showing sites adjacent to the Skeena Estuary, British Columbia, Canada where intertidal mudflats at Papermill Bay, Wolfe Cove, Cassiar Cannery, Inverness Passage, and Tyee Banks were sampled during this project.
Fig 2.
Sediment properties; Sediment pH (A); Median sediment particle diameter (B); Percentage Organic Carbon content (C); and Percentage Total Nitrogen content (D) presented at four depths in sediments sampled from Cassiar Cannery, Inverness Passage, Papermill Bay, Wolfe Cove and Tyee Banks intertidal mudflats.
Fig 3.
Total concentrations of Potentially Toxic Elements (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn) with depth in sediments sampled from Cassiar Cannery, Inverness Passage, Papermill Bay, Wolfe Cove and Tyee Banks intertidal mudflats.
Table 1.
Geoaccumulation index (Igeo)a for potentially toxic elements in sediments from Cassiar Cannery (CC) and Papermill Bay (PB) using reference sites Tyee Banks (TB), Wolfe Cove (WC) and Inverness Passage (IP).
Fig 4.
EDTA extractable (potentially bioavailable) Potentially Toxic Elements (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) with depth in sediments sampled from Cassiar Cannery, Inverness Passage, Papermill Bay, Wolf Cove, and Tyee Banks intertidal mudflats.
Fig 5.
Principal components analysis of sediment properties (pH median sediment particle diameter, percentage organic carbon content and percentage total nitrogen content) and total and EDTA extractable Potentially Toxic Elements (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn) in sediments sampled 0–5 cm, 5–10 cm, 10–15 cm and 15-20cm from Cassiar Cannery, Inverness Passage, Papermill Bay, Wolf Cove and Tyee Banks intertidal mudflats.
(A) is the latent vectors for each variable plotted in the plane of principal component one and principal component two, (B) is the principal component scores of all the samples plotted in the plane of principal component one and principal component two. Error bars represent the standard deviations of 5 replicate samples taken from 5 different transects.
Fig 6.
Non-metric multidimensional scaling plots (nMDS) of invertebrate PTE concentrations and the vector overlay (left hand side) of five intertidal mudflats along the north coast of British Columbia, Canada.
CC: Cassiar Cannery. WC: Wolfe Cove. IP: Inverness Passage. PB: Papermill Bay. TB: Tyee Banks with (A) the entire dataset considered or (B) only including the two benthic invertebrates found at all five sites; Baltic clams (Macoma balthica) and Oregon pill bugs (Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis).
Fig 7.
The relationship between Chromium (Cr) Biota-Sediment Accumulation Factor (BSAF) and sediment pH for (A) Baltic clams (Macoma balthica) and (B) Oregon pill bugs (Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis) sampled at five intertidal mudflats along the north coast of British Columbia, Canada.
Table 2.
Correlation coefficients for the relationship between sediment pH and Biota-Sediment Accumulation Factors of 8 potentially toxic elements in Baltic clams (Macoma balthica) and Oregon pill bugs (Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis) at all five sampling locations in the Skeena Estuary.